


Pyre

by TheSleepingKnight



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Death, Dishonored 2, Drabble, F/M, Middle Chaos Corvo Attano, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-02 12:08:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19198489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSleepingKnight/pseuds/TheSleepingKnight
Summary: Corvo burns with guilt and hate in equal measure.





	Pyre

There’s a fire that’s eating up his heart. It’s sending smoke and ash into his head, and his thoughts are clouded and murkey. He can never seem to catch them before they flutter away and die in the storms of Karnaca.

He should be happy to be back home, but his childhood memories only make the blood stand out brighter, the shadows darker, and so he chooses to ignore and forget his early days. It hardly matters, anymore. All that matters is saving his daughter.

All that matters is killing Deliah.

All that matters is that _it happened again._

(it happened again, right in front of you, you were useless _again._ _Useless, useless, useless.)_

The thought makes the fire burning in his chest _surge_ , and he sees red. He wants to see red, he wants blood, he wants steel against steel, he wants to feel like he has _done_ something, he wants _to kill anyone who tried to take her from him._

He finds suitable targets fast enough. A patrol route of guards, blocking his way to the monorail.

He gets to work at what he does best, and becomes death.

He wonders if the Outsider is watching him now, as he sinks another foot of steel into the hapless guard’s throat. The deity's fascination with him was based on his surprising willingness to spare the lives of his enemies. Even now, he still feels the tug of his better nature, urging him to pick a different path, a different route, a different choice. Sometimes, when the fire is tempered by chance, choice or character, he listens.

Today, he cannot find it in him to be merciful. Regret and guilt and hate and love burn too brightly inside him, and he cannot quench it with memories or magic.

He showed mercy once. Look how that turned out. He spared them, did the right thing, did what he thought Jessamine (Jessamine, Jessamine, my better angel, I’m so sorry), would have wanted, and they just came back and _did it again_. Marched right into the throne room and ripped his family away from him.

No. He is too tired to be kind. The monster he had lost in peace is back with a vengeance, and it’s flames loosen stiff limbs, and the limitations of age fall with malice and magic boiling in his veins.

Has he becoming boring, now? Predictable? _Disappointing_ , like Daud?

Corvo cannot tell if the thought is comforting or enraging. Time has not tempered his hate, but it has increased wisdom. The attention of the Outsider was not something to covet.

The guard gurgles and chokes. The beast of flame purrs inside his chest.

He knows, in his true mind, that this is pointless. The guard may work for the Duke, but he is just one man. It will not bring Emily back. It will not bring Jessamine back. It will not _do_ anything meaningful.

But it did make him feel powerful.

A fleeting thought crosses his mind.

_Is this why Hiram betrayed us? Because he wanted to feel like this?  
_

Hiram was such a fool. You don’t need a crown to be powerful. You didn’t even need a title.

All you needed was a blade and a monster inside you.

He vanishes like a shadow into the alleyways of Karnaca.

* * *

He occasionally wonders if the guards he kills have wives, children, lovers, families of their own. What if he is creating more people like him, every time he coats his blade scarlet?

Perhaps he will face his own Masked Felon someday, when his hair has gone grey and his flame has burned out.

Perhaps that will be a relief. 

He spares the second guard he comes across on the island. And the third. The fourth he kills, because… because he spotted him. Does it matter? His daughter needs him.

How could he not do everything and anything to save her?  

(if he had tried this hard, he could have saved Jessamine. Slow. Weak. Useless.)

Corvo kills the fifth to make himself feel better.

The Heart pulses in protest.

He spares the sixth.

Even now, her ghost still rules him.

At night, he falls asleep with the Heart beating in his hand and her voice whispering in his head.

Even her shock and disappointment, looped over and over again, was better than silence.

* * *

 

Some days, he does not feel the all-consuming embrace of the monster inside. The hate and it’s strength leaves him, and all he feels is smoke and ash where there was once fire and brimstone. He breathes in and his lungs rattle with age and bitterness. Silken addiction leaves his lips and ghosts dance in his eyes.

(Jessamine, _jessamine…_ )

Corvo looks at himself, dressed as up as a monster, and all he can think about are the scarecrows they’d gussied up and put in the fields to scare away the birds, a horror that was nothing but dead weeds in on the inside. These are the days where he’s tempted to pick up his knife and open up a vein, just to make sure he’s still real and this is still his life. Because sometimes, he’s not so sure. Maybe this is all a mirror, and he’s been peering in too long. Maybe he’s lost in the void.

Maybe he’s dead.

Days like today, his heart has forgotten how to feel. It is both less and so much more painful then the loss and the rage.

When he kills, and he does kill, he does not feel anything. He watches life leave the eyes of the woman who’d sworn in with Delilah, morbidly fascinated with the moment she stops being a person and starts being a corpse.

He recognizes her eyes from the mirror on the ship.

Perhaps, when he dies, his eyes will look alive instead.

* * *

 

He spares the doctor. A disease of the mind is something Corvo understands. What else could he call the burning sensation that urged him to kill?

He kills Jindosh. If he had wanted the perfect killing machine, he should have just sent for Corvo.

He kills Brenna. _Witch_. She and Delilah should have known better than to hurt his daughter.

He spares Stilton. He cannot make him suffer more then what time already did to him.

It has been nearly a decade since he last killed a man who claimed the throne.

The second time around, it was just as satisfying. Goodbye, Luca Abele.

Billy… he lets Billy live. He surprises himself at that. But she’d helped him. And… and after all, he knew Megan Foster, not Billy Lurk. And they weren’t really the same person, were they? Besides, Corvo was too focused on the thought of killing Deliha to wait any longer.

Delilah…

He wasn’t really killing her. Not really.

She was already dead. She’d been dead since the moment she had hurt Emily. This was just… her body catching up to the fact. The sentence, before the swing. The last breath before the fall .

He dropped down and plunged the knife.

The Empress was dead.

Long Live the Empress.


End file.
